Esther Duflo Wins Clark Medal

Congratulations to MIT’s Esther Duflo for winning the John Bates Clark Medal. (NB: Unlike Richard T. Ely, J. B. Clark was actually a great economist.) Duflo is a pioneer in the use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) which, along with natural experiments, is becoming an increasingly popular alternative to conventional regression models. Interestingly, the WSJ reports that Harvard’s Sendhil Mullainathan, another RCT person, was also on the short list. Given the extreme faddishness of social scientists we can expect a wave of RCT centers, experiments, and papers in the next few years.